Working with Highly Informed Consumers
Do you fancy yourself as a highly informed consumer? When buying your cars, televisions or smart device, do you walk into the store and say, “Help me?” or do you walk into the store and say, “Here is what I need?”
I’ll bet most of you aren’t the former. Like your clients, you scour the web and ask friends what their experience has been with “XYZ” product. Do you think your clients are different? Probably not.
To work with highly informed consumers you need to do one of two things:
1. Come prepared to take their knowledge and turn it into something more useful (problem solving).
2. Be the source of the knowledge.
Ideally you will do both of these things, but sometimes it is hard to control where the consumption of information comes from. However, if you want to have more control early in the sales process it is a great idea for your organization to be doing the education early and often.
Do you want your clients to buy the newest unified communication platform? Then make education readily available through online content, live events, webinars and of course the face to face sales meeting.
(Note: When you do get those meetings make sure you are coming with some valuable ideas. Lunch doesn’t cut it anymore!)
In cases where you can’t get ahead of the curve, the key is making sure the value you bring solves clients’ problems beyond just knowing what technology they need.
If the client thinks they want a video solution from Cisco, help them figure out how to deploy it as widely as possible so they can get video on the desktop, in the huddle rooms and on mobile devices rather than just in the boardrooms and conference spaces.
Sales professionals who can take their clients knowledge and make it more valuable will long have their place, but beware the informed consumer is changing everything and it is the first of five trends that are transforming the tech sale for the foreseeable future.
